Seal in his stead. (Lord Haddington had
behaved very well, had given up his place to Sir Robert, and told him
he should do with him just as he liked--leave him out of the Cabinet,
shift him to another place, or leave him at the Admiralty, as would
suit him best.)

Sir Robert hinted to Lord Ripon that Lord Haddington had behaved so
well, but got no more out of him, but "that he would _almost_ have
done the same." Sir Robert proposes to see Lord Ellenborough in order
to offer him the Admiralty, received the Queen's sanction likewise to
Lord St Germans (the Postmaster-General) being put into the Cabinet. I
said: "With your Government that has no inconvenience, and even if you
had a hundred members in the Cabinet, as you don't tell them but
what is absolutely necessary, and follow your own course." He said in
reply, that he should be very sorry if he had to have told his
Cabinet that he meant to send for Lord Ellenborough. We could not help
contrasting this conduct with the subjection Lord John has shown to
his people. It is to his _own_ talent and firmness that Sir Robert
will owe his success, which cannot fail. He said he had been
determined not to go to a general election with the fetters the last
election had imposed upon him, and he had meant at the end of the next
Session to call the whole Conservative Party together and to declare
this to them, that he would not meet another Parliament pledged to the
maintenance of the Corn Laws, which could be maintained no longer, and
that he would make a public declaration to this effect before another
general election came on. This had been defeated by events coming too
suddenly upon him, and he had no alternative but to deal with the Corn
Laws before a national calamity would _force_ it on. The league had
made immense progress, and had enormous means at their disposal. If
he had resigned in November, Lord Stanley and the Protectionists would
have been prepared to form a Government, and a Revolution might have
been the consequence of it. Now they felt that it was too late.

Sir Robert has _an immense scheme in view_; he thinks he shall be able
to remove the contest entirely from the dangerous ground upon which it
has got--that of a war between the manufacturers, the hungry and the
poor against the landed proprietors, the aristocracy, which can only
end in the ruin of the latter; he will not bring forward a measure
upon the Corn Laws, but a much more comprehensive one. He will d